Catwoman’s voice was hushed over the OraCom. With Robin or
Nightwing, or even Huntress, that meant they were in a location where a normal
tone of voice might be overheard. In Selina’s case, she just liked whispering
in his ear.

“Speak,” he said in the no-nonsense patrol gravel.

..:: I want to state for the record that there is
nothing more ludicrous in this world than grown-up crooks who aren’t Joker
wearing clown makeup, poised for battle and imagining they look threatening.::..

“Noted.”

..:: A grown-up Rogue like me watching over them like a
guardian angel ranks a close second,::.. she added.

Batman glanced down at the ATM that had been the site of so
many robberies in the last month. There was another on 14th Street,
and he had the Batmobile parked conspicuously nearby, assuring the would-be
thief would move his business here tonight. Now he just had to wait until
somebody withdrew cash… which they were unlikely to do after midnight.

It was one of the particular annoyances of the
partnership. Catwoman could always see through him, she always saw the truth
that Psychobat didn’t want to acknowledge, and she usually called him out on
it. For years, those admissions were confined to his feelings for her. Now
that they’d moved past that into other subjects, her… manner in calling
him out was still charged with that teasing sexual tension. Hearing that voice
that could always sear through Psychobat’s defenses and burn its way into his
core—hearing that voice talking about Westies wearing Joker war paint…

They might not be the worst criminals in Gotham, but they
were criminals and Batman was… conflicted about his feelings watching
over them ‘like a guardian angel.’ It was preferable when Catwoman took a
shift the way she was doing tonight, but no matter who was actually on watch, it
was ultimately Batman’s responsibility to make sure those men came to no harm
because of his war strategy. Anthony Marcuso wanted to make overtures to
the Joker; that was his doing. It was crucial to get power pieces off the game
board, and it was desirable that they remove each other—in a non-lethal
manner—rather than Batman removing them himself. It served both the primary
objective, minimizing casualties, and the secondary goal, achieving a permanent
reduction in the criminal power base. So he maneuvered Marcuso into this idea
that his personal success and survival depended on getting out from Carmine’s
shadow, and he focused Marcuso’s attention on Joker as the vehicle to do so.
Either he actually intended to make a separate peace as he claimed, or he meant
to take Joker out himself when Carmine had failed. Having established himself
as an independent and superior power, he would then be in a position to
negotiate his own peace with the Rogues. Either way, he’d have a minimal chance
of success and enormous potential to get himself killed if he proceeded with the
plan he envisioned. Batman knew that would be the case when he began. He knew
the situation would have to be monitored.

And it was the best use of his time: with Riddler running
the Rogues, their most lethal capabilities were being used in non-lethal ways.
It wasn’t an ideal situation, it wasn’t better than a Gotham with
no war at all in progress, but with Riddler at the helm, the Rogues United end
of the equation was relegated to something Nightwing, Huntress, Robin and
Batgirl could monitor without constant check-ins. The one thing Nigma would not
be able to contain, however, was Joker. The episode taking over The Regal
Laundry Service showed that…

Carmine Falcone squinted at the Walk/Don’t Walk sign at the
crosswalk outside his townhouse. He could see from the window that something
was wrong with it, but he had to go outside to see exactly what was going on.

First, none of the letters in WAIT lit up, except for the
I.

Then, it was only the WA in WALK.

Then, only the NT in DON’T WALK.

The next cycle was the IT in WAIT, the AL in WALK and the L
in DON’T WALK.

Then, I-WA-NT-IT again, and although Carmine ‘The Roman’
Falcone was no fan of modern music, he must have heard the song at some point,
because he was quite sure what was to happen next. He waited with grim
satisfaction as the next WALK remained dark and only the N showed on DON’T WALK,
then a completely dark cycle until DON’T WALK appeared again, this time with the
O and W lit.

Carmine stormed back to the townhouse and bellowed for Fat
Stefano to call the twins in Metropolis and find out what that song was that
went “I want it all, I want it now.” Stefano remembered Magda the cook had a
teenage son, and she was a lot easier to contact than the twins. So they had
Magda text her son…

He texted back a link through something called “Let me
Google that for you,” and while Magda was calling her son on the house phone to
chew him out for being a smart ass, Carmine and Fat Stefano took her phone and
followed the link. It was a music video with some long hair band called Queen
singing the requisite phrase, and Carmine muttered that Regal Laundry must be
the target. It was the first riddle he’d actually understood from the clue, and
that alone was pissing him off. After a week dealing with these lunatics, he
was starting to understand, their mad language was seeping into his brain.

“Hey, look at that,” Stefano said, pointing a chubby finger
at the screen—which accidentally closed the window and they had to wait for
Magda to finish yelling at her son to get back to the video screen.

“See, right there,” Stefano said—pointing again, but this
time merely obscuring what he was trying to show Roman. The video had 5340
likes and 28 dislikes. The top comment said “28 people want nothing.” 90
people liked that. And the comment was made by someone whose name consisted of
3 green question marks. Even Carmine realized the name was a link, and the
profile it opened specified a $90,000 ransom, which went up to 91 as they were
reading.

“One for each like on the comment,” Stefano guessed.

Carmine cursed whoever liked the comment in the last 30
seconds, and hence cost him a thousand dollars, but he also realized he had an
opening at last to set Bane’s plan—which he now considered his own plan—in
motion. Solve one riddle, pay one ransom, and use the time thus
gained to hit the freaks hard. Gut them as no one has ever been gutted.

He knew what he wanted to do, the only question was whether
or not Bane should be told. The hulking brute could deal a demoralizing blow
just by showing his face at the execution of the Z—although it would require
leaving one survivor to tell the tale—but it would be worth sparing one ‘worker
bee’ to bring that kind of terror to the whole of the Rogue world.

IF this Bane would play ball, that is. Carmine did not
like the man’s independence, or his high-handed way of finding fault with any
idea that he himself didn’t initiate. Bane obviously thought of himself as a
great schemer, but Carmine could see no evidence of it. He wasn’t of
Gotham, he didn’t understand anything about the city, and seemed
completely oblivious on both counts. Having failed here once, he’d come back
without seemingly having learned a damn thing. He was as oblivious as ever to
the fact that he just didn’t get how Gotham worked! Carmine didn’t like having
that kind of blind stupidity in his operation—Bane was the most dangerous kind
of moron, the kind who thought he was smart—but like an erratic driver, it was
better to keep such a creature in front of you where you could see what he was
doing.

So… he would send the Riddler $90,000 (there was no reason
to pay an extra thousand, he realized, when he could have just as easily seen
the webpage a minute sooner before the price went up), and this Z and
Kittlemeier would never see the next dawn…

At least that was the plan. The plan assuming The
Riddler would be as good as his word. The plan assuming that, when Fat Stefano
went to pay the ransom, he wouldn’t find the Regal Laundry trucks already
defaced, the drivers dead, and every restaurant on the route informed that they
were now free to patronize any legitimate linen service they wished—and in fact,
that continued patronage of Regal Laundry—reinvented as Regal LAUGHTER—would end
pretty much as the new name implied.

Then the phone rang.

Batman tried to warn them. Years before this Rogue war, he
warned them: Falcone front or no, having the letters LAU in the name of a
business was inviting disaster. Having it painted on the side of each and every
truck, it was only a matter of time. Go on being a mobbed up laundry service if
you want (well, he didn’t say THAT), but change the name to being a mobbed up
LINEN service.

Falcone wouldn’t listen, and now a man was dead. One dead
and two more in the ICU, because that wretched excuse for a human being wouldn’t
follow the lead of someone who had the answers, because he personally disliked
them and what they represented.

Bruce was a bigger man than that. He didn’t like Edward
Nigma personally and he detested what The Riddler represented, but he couldn’t
blame him for Joker’s actions. The culpability lay entirely on Joker himself,
for being Joker, and on Falcone for being a pig-headed fool. Nigma was, at the
end of the day, the best person to be in the position he was. The best thing
Batman could do for him, as well as for Gotham itself, was to isolate the most
dangerous and unstable elements—in this case Joker—and remove them from the
playing field. Reducing power slowly and evenly on both sides so that neither
would gain an advantage, until the bomb was defu... The thought was cut off by a
low, thoughtful whistle sounding over the OraCom, and Batman winced.

“You’re wearing a mic,” he reminded Catwoman mildly.

..:: Mother of all things feline and furry, ::.. she
replied.

“That’s not a report.”

..:: Y-yeah, this is a hard one to put clearly and
concisely. They made contact. Sort of. Call it pre-contact.::..

“Joker made contact with the Westies?”

..:: Harley. Harley showed up at their social club with
an envelope. ::..

“Why am I only hearing about this now?”

..:: Because I wanted to get my hands on it first and
see what it said..::..

“Catwoman, there are protocols for this kind of thing!”

..:: I know perfectly well how to open packages from
Joker and the Whacko Miss, I’ve had both of them as my Secret Santa,
remember?::..

Psychobat had an angry retort, but the more rational part
of Batman’s mind squelched it.

“Well?” he asked instead.

..:: Cell phone. Happy-face post-it on the front reads
“Thursday, 9 o’clock.” Only app installed is a GPS. Looks like a
standard-issue ransom drop routine: Thursday at nine they’ll send the
coordinates on where to go for the face-to-face.::..

“Okay, upload the Bat-Intercept and send it on. I should
be able to learn the meeting place by other means and pre-set the location, but
we’ll have that signal as a back-up.”

..:: Already done. ::..

“What else aren’t you telling me?”

..:: Come again? ::..

“None of this warrants the whistle or ‘mother of all things
furry.’ What aren’t you telling me?”

..:: Harley. I don’t know exactly. Either Harley’s
drastically changed her look—and had a boob job, and maybe shrunk an inch—or
he’s got another one.::..

If there was one thing Jervis Tetch loved more than Alice
in Wonderland it was being the first to know. If there was one thing he hated
more than the vorpal Bat going snicker-snack on his finely laid plans, it was
being out of the loop. Today, he was getting a topsy-turvy blend of both.
Having finally escaped Gotham General—where they were far too quick to sedate a
man with a head wound, in his opinion, particularly when placing a simple array
of theta-emitters around his noggin could have blocked his pain receptors
without inhibiting his ability to hold onto a thought for more than—oh bother,
where was he? Right, escaped from Gotham General, found a cab, driver suffered
from chronic lower back pain, which was lucky because he saw the sense of all
Jervis was saying about painkillers and the absolute inadvisability of muddling
a perfectly good noggin when all you had to do was let a poor man send to his
hideout and get a little microchip that would kill the pain without killing off
the ability to hold onto a thought long enough to… bother, now he’d missed his
turn.

Having made it to his lair, sorted through his chips and
found the proper one, and FINALLY switched off the pain, he’d made his way to
the Iceberg to share the big news. The biggest news to hit Gotham since the
Jabberwock was young: he had been attacked! He, the Mad Hatter, was seized upon
right at the mouth of the rabbit hole by the Voluminous
Bandersnatchcalled Bane!
(And who let that Struthious Sitherthig back in
town would have to be explained once the Trupenifous Triflefreg itself was dealt
with. We simply cannot have any Low Luthington slithering into a place like
Gotham and knocking the established residents down the rabbit hole any time they
wanted a tea cake. That was not civilized.)

He was sure everyone would agree, and no
one more than Jonathan. Jonathan loathed bullies and there was none bullier
than Bandersnatch Bane. Jervis wanted his own revenge, of course, and hats
would certainly be involved, but there are times you want a brainstorm before
taking on a Bandersnatch—and if your brainstorm buddy has the ability to make
the Bandersnatch afraid of his own ass cheek, that’s okay too.

But what did he find now that he had the
biggest piece of news to share since Catty set Scarecrow on fire? No one he
knew was at the Iceberg anymore, not even Oswald! They had set up new
headquarters in a warehouse, and he had to hat four waitresses before he could
learn the address. By the time he got there, it was only henchmen left watching
the place (and playing something called Star Wars: The Old Republic,
which looked like fun). The henchmen sent him to an auto mechanic (no hatting
required if he’d been willing to pay $50, but he saw no need to pay good money
when he had a hat). The mechanic’s place had also been used for a day or two
and then turned over to henchmen, who sent him to a midtown piano bar. From
there it was a knife store, a health club, a bowling alley, and now at a
laundry.

It didn’t sound right—the Gotham Rogues
set up shop in a laundry?—but Zed and Zowie were right there in the parking lot,
unloading canisters of laughing gas from a van. He followed them… past an area
cordoned off with yellow and black police tape which read HA HA instead of
GPD—that was quite promising. There was a carousel horse with a knife through
its eye, a barrel of Silly Putty, a couple Joker cards and a Monty Python-era
John Cleese poster leaning against the wall waiting to be hung, and a can of
spray paint on the ground beneath a fresh Kilroy graffiti reading “KILLBAT WAS
HERE.” No actual Joker or Harley, but it seemed like he’d finally caught up
with his fellow Rogues moving into a place instead of out. He
sprinted ahead to grab Zed, who pointed him to an office where Zed said he could
find Zoiks. (Jervis always liked the Z, for they seemed to speak his language).
Reaching the office, he saw Zoiks was indeed there and—EUREKA—in a heated
conversation with Edward Nigma.

“I appreciate the add-ons are a Z
trademark” Eddie was saying. “And a lair or two a year, I can be a sport. But
with the number of jobs I’ve been giving you—”

“Eddie!” Jervis cried joyously.

“I mean a wine cellar under
a—Jervis, there you are! We’ve been looking for you for days.”

Carmine Falcone was not the kind of don who hid in an
out-of-town compound during a war. He knew not to follow a predictable routine,
but he refused to stay inside day after day, never leaving the house. Today’s
outing was to the driving range at the Carimate Club to hit a bucket of balls.
He was frustrated; it felt good to pour all that energy into fierce, powerful
swings. It felt even better to imagine the ball was Bane’s head. He started
out picturing it as Joker, then Two-Face, Poison Ivy, Scarecrow, the various
faces he’d seen at the wedding that day… but once he imagined Bane’s oversized
skull sitting there on the tee, he held onto that image until he was out of
balls.

Then Neil Picante came over and they chatted about his
daughter and her semester abroad in Padua, about Carmine’s sons in Metropolis,
about the Knights trading Hodge, and that piece on the news about Vegas rail...
Then Neil’s phone vibrated, and when he checked the text, he gave Carmine a
curious look.

“It says I’m supposed to tell you ‘it has to do with the
hands.’”

“WHAT?!” Carmine barked, grabbing at the phone.

“See,” Neil said, showing him the message.

“I… see,” Carmine said, looking at Picante coldly.

Neil took a step back, appalled by the sudden appearance of
suspicion and malice in a man he’d always considered a friend. He started to
speak, but Carmine turned and stormed off towards the lockers without a word.

These ROGUES. Yes, he could understand their cursed
language now just fine: “We could have hit you. You left your safe house
thinking yourself untouchable, and see how we got to your pal? He could have
put a bullet in your brain as easily as deliver a message.”

In The Godfather it was Luca Brasi’s bullet-proof vest
wrapped around his ring and a fish. In Gotham, it was this Riddler excrescence
and “something to do with the hands.”

By the time he changed clothes, Ken the club concierge and
all around gofer was waiting with a message that had come in to the switchboard
while Carmine was on the driving range. Neatly written out on the little embossed slips
used for the purpose, it read: “Hour hand is first.”

Needless to say, Carmine did not tip Ken for delivering
this monstrosity of a message. (In fact, Carmine considered himself generous in
not beating Ken senseless with a nine iron.)

Hour hand is first, what the fuck was that supposed
to mean? The daily challenge was “The Exquisite Paradox of the Clock,” and
Carmine had no freaking idea what that meant. He knew he had little chance
of repeating his victory with the Queen clue—even if he never did get to take
advantage of it, Carmine did consider it a victory that he got one right… Clock,
paradox, something to do with the hands, the hour hand is first…

Stopping at the juice bar on the way out, Russ Mitchell was
ahead of him in line. Carmine tried to be polite, but he couldn’t follow the
conversation. He pretended, but he kept thinking about the hands of a clock…
and if maybe he should reconsider bringing Bane in on this one. The guy did
think of himself as a schemer, just like this Riddler did. Maybe he would see what
Carmine couldn’t… Meanwhile, he hadn’t heard a word Russ was saying, nor did he
notice when Russ broke off mid-sentence to take out his phone. He did notice
when Russ’s brow crinkled as he looked at the screen, then glanced up at Carmine
quizzically, back at the phone, then back at Carmine.

“Minute hand is second,” he read as if he was speaking a
foreign language phonetically without knowing what the words actually meant.

Carmine’s lip began to tremble, though no sound actually
came out.

“It says you need another hint. What is this, one of those
multi-media games to plug a movie or something?”

Carmine’s hands shook as he paid for his juice. Shook as
he drank it. Shook as he gave the valet the ticket for his car—so much so that
the valet asked if he was okay to drive. Carmine would have cursed him out, but
he noticed the valet had a computer screen in front of him that presumably told
them where the cars corresponding to various ticket stubs were parked.

Not wanting to risk a new message coming in to someone he
just called a rutting bastard who should mind his own goddamn business, Carmine
said he was fine… glanced at the screen… and then thanked the valet for his
concern.

The kid took the ticket, picked up the corresponding keys,
checked the screen to see where the car was parked, and jogged off to retrieve
it. Carmine stared after him… and then felt a tap on his shoulder. Turning
with dread to see a tall, elegantly-dressed black woman holding a phone in her
hand, Carmine swallowed.

“The second hand is third,” she said.

He stared. She looked down at her screen and back up at
him.

“But the minute hand was second,” she added.

He stared.

She shrugged and continued inside. She didn’t notice the
wiry man with mischievous eyes and a receding hairline seated in the lobby. Nor
did he appear to notice her. His attention was completely focused on his own
‘phone,’ an older model with an old-fashioned nub of black plastic antenna
sticking out the top.

Eddie touched a final button, pointed it at the woman’s
purse, and shot a final “Thank You” into her text receiver. So that was done.
He hadn’t bothered to thank the others, but the shoulder tap was such a nice
touch, and the expression on Carmine’s face was priceless.

Now he had to pick up Harley, who was really the only hope
of untangling this next bit at the Wild Deuce Gaming Parlor.

Batman never intended “Gina O’Malley” to make an appearance
at the Downpatrick Carpentry Club. Looking for her gave Matches an excuse to go
there and ultimately to get close to Marcuso. But now that Marcuso got his
appointment for a sitdown with Joker, he wanted to close the Downpatrick early
on Thursday night. That meant Matches needed a new excuse to be there now that
the place wouldn’t be legitimately open for business, and the best reason he
could think of was if one of the Westies called him.

He found Selina in her suite, and found her more than
receptive to the idea:

“What if Gina went in late Thursday afternoon,” Bruce said,
leaning forward with an excited glint in his eye—looking, to Selina, like any
name-Rogue at the Iceberg explaining the intricacies of their brilliant new
scheme.

“Fresh from a grift,” she added with a naughty grin. “A
few thousand in new bills to pay to the local boss?”

“Right. Then Pat—who is absolutely on Matches’s side—would
stall her. He’d tell her to stick around and meet said boss, since he’d be
coming by in a few hours for some other business. Gina isn’t the kind of girl
who would let a chance like that pass by.”

“She might leave to pretty herself up a little,” Selina
interrupted, redirecting his idea seamlessly and without a pause. “There’d be
no point hanging around for hours just to flirt with a guy like Pat, but she
would be back to meet the big shot no matter what.”

“And Pat would call Matches and let him know the broad’s
here. Then Matches and Gina—”

“Or rather, Batman and Catwoman—”

“Would be on hand when Marcuso gets the call to meet—”

“Joker,” they said together.

Then they looked at each other for a silent beat.

“Well that was fun,” she murmured as she sometimes did
after sex.

Bruce said nothing for a heartbeat, then he nodded once,
told her to show him “Gina’s outfit” when she was ready, and left.

Eddie had turned the Wild Deuce over to Two-Face to do
whatever he wanted. Apparently, all he’d decided to ‘do’ was play house with
Poison Ivy. Eddie wanted to talk to Harvey alone. He needed a sounding board
and, apart from banging Ivy, Harvey had good sense and judgment. But there was
absolutely no way to have a rational conversation with Queen Chlorophyll hanging
around, particularly when one of the things they had to discuss was Ivy
herself. So he’d brought Harley along the way you bring wine to a dinner
party. (And, since the Z had equipped his own lair with an actual wine cellar,
he also brought a bottle of Riesling).

It was a very girly reunion. Harley was eager to share her
revised opinion of Pagliaccia, and Ivy seemed almost indecently pleased to hear
about it. Harvey took Eddie out back to “show him the perimeter defenses” and
since they left the wine with the women, they cut through the kitchen and Harvey
took a six pack out of the refrigerator. They sat on the generator and laser
calibration unit respectively, drank, and talked.

“Pagliaccia is occupying a human-shaped hole where Harley
used to be,” Harvey explained. “Long as she's there, the chance of Harley and
Joker getting back together is practically nil, and if Harley isn’t trying to
throttle her every five minutes, the longer the whole thing lasts.”

“Ah,” Eddie said, and sipped. “Doesn’t bother you then,
the thought of those two getting together?”

“Harley and Ivy?” Harvey asked. “No, we are quite
conversant with that particular ‘thought,’ and we can honestly say ‘bother’ is
not the word we would use to describe our reaction.”

Eddie smiled and segued easily from opening pleasantries to
the important questions: Since Harley blabbed to Jervis, it had become
semi-common knowledge in Rogue circles that Ivy’s pheromones didn’t work on gay
men. Jervis, Jonathan, and Eddie himself were in agreement that the biochemical
process must need a root attraction to build on, which would explain why
straight women like Selina and Roxy were immune. Eddie wanted to know if Harvey
knew whether the logical extension of that theory was also true and lesbians
would be susceptible.

Harvey finished his beer and opened another before
answering.

“I’ve no idea. You want to send her after the fire
bomber?”

“Best information: it’s Ella Cullen, aka Mollatova, indie
talent out of Philadelphia. Carmine probably thought he was being clever, using
an out of town hitter favored by the Pelaccis. And it was pretty clear from
Harley’s account that the woman was attracted to her,” Eddie noted.

“You don’t think Pammy might sic the flytrap on you for
suggesting she drive ninety miles, past refineries no less, to seduce the
woman that tried to blow her up?”

“She can take the train,” Eddie said looking off into the
distance with an impish glint in his eye. “And I think if it’s put to her that
Joker went all the way to Keystone and turned Susannah Pelacci in a little over
a day, she might want to beat his record.”

Harvey laughed. “Yes, she might at that.”

He gave Eddie another beer and Eddie drank, thinking about
the second, more delicate subject he’d come to discuss: Bane was back in
Gotham. Carmine had imported more than a second-rate hitter from Fishtown, he’d
brought back that sorry ass steroid case who effed up the delicate Gotham
ecosystem once before. It presented… an opportunity. 36 hours, if not 48… if
not more.

Eddie couldn’t shake the feeling that a better man should
feel conflicted about the opportunity before him, but he didn’t. He simply
didn’t. Bane was back and it seemed like nobody knew. Nobody except for
Jervis, Carmine, and now Eddie himself. Fate doesn’t hand out gifts like that
every day. When she does, when Fate Herself deigns to throw gold at your feet,
isn’t a man obligated to bend down and pick it up? Wouldn’t it be the
height of ingratitude to refuse? If he did, she would not be so generous
again. In fact, she might decide to punish the ingrate in an epoch-making
manner.

That was Eddie’s thought as Harvey, having noticed his
silence, waved his acid-scarred hand in front of Eddie’s face.

“Y’in there, Ed?”

Eddie smiled and made a joke.

Of course, Harvey didn’t have the one key piece of
information that would make him the perfect sounding board, but if Selina had
proven anything, it’s that there are more important qualities in a criminal
cohort than knowing who Batman is under his mask. (There were more than 1600
anagrams for “Sleeping with the enemy” that included the phrase “Theme-sin,” 14
of which also had the word hint—and if he ever found a place to rob or a
victim to kidnap called “Elegy Pew,” that would be a riddle Batman would
NEVER forget.)

It might be premature to call the East End gentrified, but
like SoHo, TriBeCa, and MePaDi before it, it had started the transformation that
begins with Gothamites desperate for affordable housing noticing an industrial
or working class area that no one has thought to develop, and ends with two brokers
on a reality show vying for the honor of listing Allison Janney’s $10 million
loft. The East End had yet to see a textile factory converted into trendy
celebrity housing, but it had reached the point that a decrepit dive bar, with
no name anyone was aware of other than the word BAR above the door, was to be
gutted and re-envisioned as a blue-hued, late-night lounge. It had reached the
point that when such a bar is to be “re-envisioned,” there will be a
Construction Preview Party before the work begins—that party to be attended by
one fashion designer, a celebrity chef, a couple runway models, an Emmy-winner,
two Grammy nominees, the Knights’ new third baseman, and at least one
Kardashian.

None of which impressed Gina O’Malley in the least. The
little pucker she gave when Anthony Marcuso got the text, the barely
perceptible eye roll as he read out the address, it was quite adorable—and one
of the reasons, Bruce decided, Matches was so hopelessly smitten with her.
Matches was out of luck tonight, though. Gina had played up to Anthony Marcuso
like the expert grifter she was. He’d offered his arm and invited her to
accompany him on ‘a little bit of business she might find amusing,’ after which
they’d celebrate with a midnight supper at Barzana’s. Matches slunk away,
rejected and ignored, as Marcuso said he thought Gina was the kind of girl who
liked champagne. Moments later, Batman took up his position on a rooftop down
the street, as a sleek black Town Car pulled up to the door Matches had just left
through.

As the car drove farther downtown, Batman had to revise his
assessment of Anthony Marcuso. He had assumed this proposed sit-down was a trap
and Marcuso was planning to kill Joker the way Falcone had tried to. But he
wouldn’t invite a woman he just met to a hit—an extra witness to silence, there
would be no point. No, he’d invited Gina to impress her, and possibly to
impress Joker. That meant he was going into that meeting expecting everyone to
walk out alive, and that meant there would not be an attempted murder charge to
throw at him on apprehension. And that meant Plan B: the evidence packet Batman
had prepared from last year’s pump-and-dump and the Westies’ ongoing protection
racket… not all that much. Without even a drug sentence to hold over him, the
Feds would have little chance getting Marcuso to cut a deal, but that’s not what
worried Batman. With only securities fraud and misdemeanor extortion on the
table, Marcuso would almost certainly get bail. That meant he’d be free
until after his trial and still be a player in the war with the Rogues.

The Town Car reached the East End, approaching Stanton from
the wrong side. The narrow one-way street was packed tight with parked cars, so
the driver continued without slowing…

Removing Joker from the playing field was the primary
objective of this operation, and that would still be achieved, but Batman hated
the idea of settling for so much less than the situation afforded, of
accepting such a third-rate result because someone wasn’t planning
cold-blooded murder.

Broken ribs might do the trick. Batman had no qualms about
sending a criminal to the hospital, but he wasn’t oblivious to the irony: he
was only setting out to do so in this case because Marcuso wasn’t as bad as he’d
thought.

The car stopped in the middle of the street in front of a
non-descript door between a Mom & Pop grocery on the one side and a graffiti’d
metal security door on the other. The latter was presumably what caught Joker’s
attention: the graffiti mural of a skull had a fine set of upper teeth that, if
you were so inclined, you might see as a smile.

Batman glanced over the roofs and ledges, determining the
various angles on the front door, the various angles on the ledges, and optimal
position to make his move. The driver opened the car door, and Marcuso and his
entourage filed into the bar.

“How’s the Italian food in this Italian restaurant?” Joker
said as Marcuso and Gina entered the dingy empty barroom.

“Oh, hell,” Selina said under her breath. Gina recognized
the quote from The Godfather, but Selina recognized the Joker’s tone and
manner: arms outstretched as if welcoming home a favored son with the repetition
of a childhood joke. He was being playful. In calling a sitdown,
Marcuso had given Joker a new situation—in the sitcom sense—and a new audience.

“Try the veal, it’s the best in the city,” Marcuso replied
with just as much enthusiasm as Joker and mirroring his open-armed gesture. “My
uncle’s favorite movie,” he explained with a smile that was almost as wide as
their host’s.

Joker made a noise like oheeu, seeming both pleased
and perplexed that his greeting got such a warm (and unterrified) response.

“This’d be the uncle that ginsued my dentist?” Joker asked,
trying once more to get a little terror going.

“I honestly don’t know—Can I sit down—which is why I
figured we should meet and talk it out before any really unfortunate assumptions
were made,” Marcuso said with surprising sincerity, followed by an abrupt change
of tone and subject as he spotted a chair, followed by a return to the original
talking point as if nothing at all had happened.

Joker nodded absently, still perplexed but now rather
fascinated by someone whose gypsy moth attention span appeared to rival his own.

“Dentist, skewered,” he said, pulling up a chair of his own
opposite Marcuso’s. “Do you know how hard it is finding a guy who will grow
back teeth? Ain’t no FDA approval on that stuff; you have to know
people. You have to grease some palms. And you have to swish with sesame oil
and apple vinegar three hours before and after every treatment.”

Marcuso nodded as if he was a fellow-sufferer.

“Yes, yes, and that is exactly the sort of thing for which
restitution should be made. Now, what do you think would be fair?”

“Restitution?”

“For the inconvenience, losing your dentist that way. You
don’t strike me as someone who’d go for a truckload of Italian suits, so if my
Uncle Carmine is responsible—and I repeat I honestly don’t know that he is—but
whoever is behind it, they’ll have to offer some sort of restitution that you’d…
actually want.”

Selina and Joker were the only ones to hear it: a quick,
double, barely-audible flutthwakunt, like a violent muffled heartbeat
just behind the walls. Two henchmen outside, taken out by Batman. Joker’s men,
presumably, since Marcuso’s were still standing in the doorway behind them.

Selina glanced at Joker to see if he’d heard, and as he
opened his mouth to say “Pagliaccia, get the canisters ready!” Gina ran for
cover in such a way that she pushed Marcuso off his chair and out of the line of
fire. Joker’s boutonniere shot a spray of something pink and gooey where
Marcuso’s head had been, as another double flutthwakunt took out the men
in the doorway. Before they hit the floor, a trio of batarangs knocked a
razor-tipped playing card from Joker’s hands, and Batman was vaulting over the
abandoned table—the heels of his boots planted firmly at the point Joker’s chest
would soon occupy.

As Joker ran into the flying bat-tackle, Gina’s clumsy
efforts to take cover behind the bar managed to swat Marcuso’s hand away from
the gun he’d instinctively reached for. Then she showed his feet which way to
run before his head caught up with what was happening. He wasn’t a stranger to
violence, but this kind of action—the dark caped blur cutting a swath through
the clownish colors in the room must be Batman—the cackling clown-blur was
Joker—and the new burst of color and movement brushing past him with a red
canister/siphon/fire extinguisher/something was too short to be a henchman.
Without consciously processing that it was a petite woman/probably the
girlfriend, Marcuso reached down for Gina’s hand as he drew his gun to lead her
to the door.

Marcuso wasn’t a particularly gallant man, and he certainly
had no feelings for the woman he just met, but there was an instinctive bond
with the only other non-masked, non-costumed non-freak still standing. Just as
the freaks themselves obviously stuck together, the little one rushing in that
way, pointing that siphon at Batman—

“YOU BIG MEANIE, THAT’S MY COOKIE DOUGH YOU’RE
MANHANDLI—Anthony?”

“Susannah?”

“Oooh, awkward,” Joker said—before Batman spun him around
and flattened him with a right cross.

“What the hell are you wearing?” Anthony cried.

“Why didn’t you call me?!” Susannah cried.

“I thought this’d be funnier,” Joker told the tile floor
under his face.

“That’s one of the fruit loops that wrecked our wedding!”
Anthony yelled, pointing down at Joker.

“Well you’re the fruit loop that left me at the altar!”

“No, I’m the guy who had to climb out on a ledge, dodge a
plant-woman, a scarecrow AND the fucking FBI to make it TO the altar! Just to
get ‘if anyone objects, let him bite down on a batarang and take it like a man,
ha ha ha.’”

On cue, Joker joined in the ha-has and said ‘That one was a
classic.’

Pagliaccia turned, looked down, and kicked him in the
temple. The fleshy clunk made even Batman wince, but Marcuso betrayed a hint of
a smile.

“I wanted to go to Vegas, if you remember,” Anthony said.
“Toss fifty bucks in the window at some Elvis chapel and spend the rest of the
week shagging and playing blackjack.”

“Oh yeah, that’s fun,” Susannah said, rolling her eyes.

“Compared to rabid penguins trying to bite my face off,
YES! Shagging and blackjack is fun! It was you and Uncle Carmine that were
all about the damn wedding.”

Batman cleared his throat. He’d already noted that the
corsage on Susannah’s wrist was the kind that shot SmileX projectiles. Now he
saw the words “So this is my fault?!” hovering on her lips. A deadlier
combination he couldn’t imagine.

“It’s a good offer. Take it,” he graveled.

“What is?” Anthony asked, but Batman was ignoring him and
looking straight at Susannah.

“Get married in Vegas. Don’t take a week. Disappear. And
never show your faces in Gotham again.”

“Hey, I wasn’t asking her,” Anthony put in.

“She just kicked the Joker unconscious,” Batman hissed.
“Arkham’s never held him for more than six months. How long do you think she’ll
last once he’s free.”

Anthony moistened his lips, then looked at her
thoughtfully.

“The wedding, and this,” Batman said, indicating her
outfit, “Waste products. He’s had absolutely no interest in either of you
personally, until now. What do you imagine he might do now that you’ve made
an impression?”

Anthony and Susannah looked at each other.

Batman knew better than to jeopardize the night’s
anticipated success by telling Arkham to expect a Joker admittance between 9:30
and 11 on Thursday night. He also knew better than to leave it up to chance.
As soon as he learned when the Marcuso sitdown was happening, he had Oracle go
into the Arkham system and quietly modify the schedule. Thanks to a
misdelivered voicemail, a rumor was circulating that the schedule changes were
part of a state-wide performance review, with promotions, bonuses and budget
cuts hanging in the balance. Result: senior personnel were all on duty at the
critical time and ‘on alert’ without knowing it. They processed Joker’s
admittance faster and more efficiently than ever before, and Batman was soon
crossing the Arkham parking lot heading back to the Batmobile. Only Selina,
Dick, Clark or Alfred would have recognized his gait as euphoric:

Joker, the most dangerous wildcard in the war, was safely
contained for the duration of the war. Marcuso was also removed, as Batman had
originally planned. Also as originally planned, there was the prospect of his
turning State’s evidence when the whole thing was over, which would deal a
critical blow to Falcone’s operation in Gotham and to the mobs that did business
with him. And yet, despite all that good fortune—which represented the very
best outcome Batman had anticipated when he drew up the plan—it turned out
Marcuso was not the ruthless killer he expected. That made the whole
arrangement more palatable. He would still be getting away with a number of
crimes, but not the taking of human life. On the contrary, to his mind, he’d be
testifying to save one.

Batman didn’t really think Joker would care that Susannah
kicked him in the head, it wasn’t the kind of thing he held onto. But Susannah
and Marcuso had no way of knowing that. In their world, among the criminals
they’d grown up with, Respect was the only currency and Disrespect the only
sin. To them, it seemed all too plausible… and the prospect of the girl he
loved wearing a death smile put all the rest into perspective.

All that remained was keeping them hidden while…

Only Selina, Dick, Clark or Alfred would have recognized
Batman’s buoyant mood as he’d crossed the parking lot, but anyone would now
realize what his mood had been now that it vaporized. In a heartbeat, the air
was ionized, crackling with dangerous, raw volatility. Behind the mask,
Batman’s eyes narrowed to slits and his mouth filled with an acrid taste
associated with his first patrols: the taste of anger and hate yearning for
expression.

On the hood of the Batmobile, a small white flag fluttered
from a ‘flagpole’ of arrow-tipped plunger. Batman pulled it off the hood of the
car and carefully removed the plunger-arrowhead base to reveal the hollow of the
cylinder that made up the pole. Predictably, there was a note inside:

Truly, it’s been a snooze.
Roman is a bore!
U try being clever with a guy that
Calls himself “The Roman.”
Excedrin Headache #15

Batman had to read it twice. Then he flipped it over to
the back, looking for the rest. The first letter of each line spelled out
T-R-U-C-E. No kidding, Edward, that was covered by the white flag. So…
What? #15
Truce Street, what the hell?

Batman looked at the horizon, half-expecting a second
arrow-plunger to come flying through the sky with the rest of the riddle.

He got into the car and noted the time—it was far too early
for Selina to go home. She’d have ditched the Gina disguise by now and hit the
rooftops. He opened her channel on the OraCom…

“I’m looking at a riddle so simplistic that he’s either had
a stroke or there’s some significance to this Excedrin Headache 15.”

..::… ::..

“Still there?”

..:: I’m thinking. ::..

“Could it have something to do with—”

..:: Bat Flower.::..

“Ex-cuse me?”

..:: There’s something called a Bat Flower. It’s purple
and black and it has whiskers.::..

“I’m familiar with it. Ivy’s never—”

..:: Yeah, that’s the joke. You kind of had to be
there. I guess she was having a bad week, and at various times Eddie and Harvey
and Jervis all got roped into these hour-long pep talks. ‘The Ballad of
Humoring Pamela,’ if you know what I mean. They were all avoiding the Iceberg,
individually, and all three of them went to the same place as an alternative.
Struck them as very funny when they ran into each other, you know that they were
all in the same predicament. Few drinks later, it was even funnier. You can
guess the topic of conversation. One of the jokes was Pammy finding out about
this bat flower and not being able to think of anything to do with it. ‘Excedrin
Headache 15.’ Batman’s your enemy, plants are your theme, there’s an actual
bat-flower and you’re coming up empty.::..

“I see. This other bar where they ran into each other,
where was it?”

..:: God, who remembers? ::..

“Was it near the Iceberg? Is that how they all happened to
find it?”

..:: No. The place had a karaoke night. You know, last
act of desperation to get some warm bodies in the door. Harley organized one,
that’s how they all knew it.::..

“Good, that’s promising. Did you go?”

..:: … This is a legitimate crimefighting thing? There
are actual lives hanging in the balance that hinge on you knowing this?::..

..:: Okay, it was below street level. And there were
remnants of sort of a western-cowboy theme—barstools, windows, some of the
shelves—but most of it had been done over as kind of a 50s diner. Then that had
mostly been painted for kind of a… bland sci-fi look. I don’t know what that
tells you other than they’re probably not in business anymore.::..

“Good. Location?”

..:: I want to say theatre district or just west
of it, but I know it was farther downtown than that.::..

As she spoke, Batman had been typing parameters into the
Batmobile’s palm-top terminal. The Batcomputer was churning through advertising
records for freebie neighborhood newspapers going back twenty years. With each
new detail, the search matrix shifted, and by the time Selina spoke the words
‘farther downtown…’

“Got it. Haekken’s. Hell’s kitchen. Don’t wait up.”

Haekken’s had indeed opened with a Western Saloon theme.
Their décor had changed to a 50s diner, to a lackluster sci-fi setting, and
finally to steampunk before it closed its doors completely. No new tenant had
moved into the basement, but the floors above were offices. Glancing at the
directory, Batman immediately noted the name Repo and Houg. Riddler had
announced his opera crime with a Sator Square: SATOR AREPO TENET OPERA ROTAS…
Arepo was the one unknown word in the Latin palindrome.

Repo and Houg was on the third floor. There were stairs,
of course, but Batman preferred to go outside and enter through the window. Too
late he remembered he’d gone in that way the night Riddler took the Kimberly
Canary from The Parker Exchange—the confrontation immediately after Nigma had announced he knew
Batman’s identity by sending a clue to the manor. That night, there had been a
table with two chairs positioned right inside the window, the stolen diamond
laid out enticingly in the center. Tonight, Riddler sat behind an executive
desk in a high-backed leather chair, with a carved chess board before him.

“Well now, you got here earlier than I expected,” he said
with a smile.

“No, I didn’t,” Batman graveled, sitting in the client
chair across from the board.

“No, you didn’t,” Nigma admitted. “But saying you
did was my opening to invite you to a game. ‘Since I wasn’t expecting you until
one or two in the morning and you’re here now, we have this extra time and a
chess board sitting in front of us…’”

Batman looked over the board: the pawns were the usual
kind, but the pieces were made up to represent the various Rogues: the king’s
rook wore a blue dome and glowing eyes representing Mr. Freeze, the king’s
knight wore a blue top hat with the signature 10/6 price tag tucked into its
rim. The bishops were Joker and Harley, the king and queen Two-Face and Ivy.
The clay blob of a queen’s knight was ‘melting’ a bit off its square, and the
queen’s rook sported Oswald’s top hat and cigarette holder.

A lip-twitch escaped him.

“C’mon, nobody will ever know,” Eddie said teasingly.

“I’m not here to play chess,” Batman said flatly.

“No, of course not. You’re here because it’s not your
nature to sit back and let the ‘runaway snowball of fuck’ keep on rolling. Oh,
you’ve been busy so far trying to keep people from getting killed, because,
well, you just can't help yourself. But I know all the while those wheels have
been turning. You know the moment is going to come when we have to stop
and take a breath, and you’ve got something ready. I know you’ve been looking
for ways to capitalize on this. Working one side against the other, not just to
defuse the situation but to gut both sides of the underworld. So the only real
winner after all of this mess will be the law and order crowd.”

“And you,” Batman said, glancing at the row of Rogue pieces
on the back rank of Riddler’s game board. “What are you doing but playing the
situation for your own benefit, to prove you’re smarter than everyone?”

“Almost. Not quite,” Eddie said with a hint of a smile.
Then he leaned across the board and spoke confidentially. “I wanted to see if
you have the balls to say ‘I need your help.’”

Batman reached across the board and picked up the
Joker-bishop. He looked thoughtfully at the little tuft of green hair and
toothy smile.

“Interesting choice. Most people would have made him the
king.”

“Most people are idiots,” Riddler observed. “King is not
only the weakest piece on the board, he’s the most predictable. Moves one
square, can’t put himself in check, and because he’s so gosh-darn
important, he doesn’t move at all until there are no options left. Bishop, on
the other hand, can wreak havoc just by existing. Move the pawn sitting in
front of him, it’s a whole new game board.”

Behind Batman’s mask, Bruce looked up sharply. It was a
shockingly brilliant analysis.

“Diagonal moves,” Batman noted. “Psychologically more
erratic, amidst the squares and straight lines of the board.”

Eddie shook his head, dissatisfied with the idea.

“No, to play that game, the most psychologically
irrational movement is the knight’s… I didn’t want to do that. You
were going to see it. That seemed… needlessly rude.”

“Thank you,” Batman said grudgingly.

“So, the bishop is out of the game,” Riddler said, removing
that piece from the board and holding it over the trash can before allowing it
to plummet. “Never got to use ‘kench’ in a riddle. Great word, kench. Middle
English, easy to rhyme, it means—”

“I was saving The Exquisite Paradox of the Clock for you,
you know. Wasted on someone like Falcone. Paradox: a fusion of the preposition para, meaning ‘against,’
with the noun stem doxa, meaning—”

“Belief.”

“Quite. Against-belief. Zeno of Elea coined the
phrase in… something or other by Plato. Zeno of Elea, which
conveniently anagrams as ‘One Foe Zeal.’” He smiled, his fingers neatly
steepled under his nose. “Would you like a glass of wine? This place has the
most amazing cellar. I’ve got a Kistler, Sea Smoke, Andrew Murray,
Dominique Laurent, even a Romanee-Conti.”

“You should have invited Selina. She’s the oenophile.”

“It’s one foe zeal, Bruce. Selina would be one
foe too many. That would be Meno of Yoontea, who probably never coined the
term for anything. No, tonight is for our little paradox, yours and mine. Your
enemy has something you need, something you have to have in this fight for all
you believe in, but asking for help from him, eh…” he wagged a finger.
“That goes against everything you believe. What a delightful
quandary, much better than that bit of wordplay about the clock hands.”

“You’re wrong if you think I would let anything as
insignificant as pride prevent my asking for help—if I thought you had anything
to offer. But all I hear are vague allusions. If you’ve got anything specific,
let’s hear it.”

Eddie smiled.

“Can’t blame a guy for trying. I have nothing. Nothing at
all to offer you but a ’96 Dominique Laurent, and alas, you turned me down.”

He got up like a master showman after the lights have gone
down, and the audience has left.

“A pity. Over oaky, but it’s only the real wine snobs that
complain about excessive oak.”

This while moving to the door, that master showman already changed in his
dressing room and ready to leave the theatre for the night. Then, reaching
the door, taking one last glance back at the stage—or in this case, back at
Batman standing up from his seat in front of the desk. The Riddler's head
tilted at a too-casual angle as his lip curled into an offhanded smile, giving
the impression that his next words were a complete afterthought:

“Oh, by the way, are you at all aware that Bane is back in town, working with
Falcone?”

A silent beat while the name sunk in, and then with the specter of the
hulking steroid case still hanging in the air...